hydrarchist writes "It's amazing just how little literature there is in circulation about Italy's scoail centres, a massive movement for the reclamation of urbanm space in action since the 1970s. Steve Wright's piece is from 2001 and is only an introduction, but hopefully over the next months this lacuna can be filled. Elsewhere Wight is the author of Storming Heaven an excellent account of the development of 'operaismo' (a movement of social criticism that placed the grassroots insurgency of labour at the center of history). You can read Sergio Bolona's review of it here, and another by Aufheben here

Italy’s Social Centres — ‘A Thousand Human Stories’


Steve Wright

If some form of radical working class politics continues to exist in Italy today, part of the credit must go to those who run that country’s self-managed occupied social centres (CSOA). As Steve Wright explains, the very growth of the centres has brought new and as yet unresolved problems of its own.

hydrarchist writes [edit.: ommitted to mention that this is from Aufheben - if you don't read this magazine you may be prone to error ;)]:

From Operaismo to 'Autonomist Marxism'



Reviewing:

Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism by Steve Wright (London: Pluto Press, 2002)

Reading 'Capital' Politically (2nd edn.) by Harry Cleaver (Leeds: AK/Anti-thesis, 2000)

The Italian 'Hot Autumn' of 1969 was one of the high points of late 20th century revolutionary struggle, and is associated with operaismo ('workerism'), a Marxian approach that focused on rank-and-file struggles in contrast to what was seen as the politics and opportunism of the dominant (Stalinist) left. The wave of social struggles of that year was echoed, although with important differences, in the tumultuous 'Movement of 1977'. Under the banner of autonomia, the workerists' analysis of class struggle was extended through the actions of groups outside the workplace. Intense street-fighting, self-reduction or outright refusal of bills and fares, the explicit raising of radical demands such as the abolition of wage-labour: all this hinted at a movement for which what counts as 'political' had been seriously questioned by struggles around wider desires and needs. Readers will be aware of workerism and autonomia today through the works of its most well-known theorists, such as Negri, through the US journal Midnight Notes, and perhaps through the aut-op-sy website and discussion list.[1] For many of those dissatisfied with the versions of Marxism and anarchism available to them in the UK, the notions of 'autonomy' and 'autonomist' have positive associations. For example, the recent 'anti-capitalist' mobilizations of J18 and Seattle both drew on themes and language associated with autonomia, such as autonomous struggles and diversity.[2] However, the history and theory surrounding workerism and autonomia are not always well known. The recent publication of two books on operaismo and autonomia and their theoretical heritage testify to the continued interest in this current. Harry Cleaver's Reading 'Capital' Politically was originally published in 1979, and has now been republished, with a new preface. Cleaver's Introduction, in particular, has been a point of reference to many in grasping the significance of post-war developments, including struggles that don't necessarily express themselves in traditional forms. Steve Wright's Storming heaven presents a critical history of the Italian movement's political and theoretical development in relation to the struggles of the 1950s, 60s and 70s - a history which, we argue, now supersedes the Cleaver presentation.

hydrarchist writes the original Spanish version is avaialble here.

BARCELONA 2004 :: waiting for the rain ::

by Stefano


contact mailing list:
llistainsostenible@sindominio.net

How and why it was
decided that in 2004, from May 9th to September
26th, Barcelona had to celebrate the "Universal Forum of
Cultures".

In the year 2004, the subsidies that the European
Community grants to
its less-developed member countries in the Mediterranean basin will end,
as the EC shifts its focus toward financing the development of its new
members in Eastern Europe. So the leadership of the city of
Barcelona decided that, in order to squeeze every last penny out
of the EC development fund, they would have to invent a special event to
justify an enormous financial investment. The Olympics had already been
assigned, and for years the Barcelona City Council had been working to
sell a new image of the city to the outside world, using slogans that have
been growing in popularity in recent years: "The City of Peace," "The
Multicultural City," "The Sustainable City"...

LonCayeway@Yahoo.com writes "Subject: The Chiapas Media Project - Song of the Earth

The Chiapas Media Project (CMP) is searching for university, religious and community-based sponsors to host screenings on their 8th annual spring tour April-May 2004. The tour will feature new videos produced by indigenous video makers from the states of Chiapas and Guerrero, Mexico.

hydrarchist writes:

Pepsi Ads Wink at Music Downloading

Theresa Howard, USA TODAY



NEW YORK — A new sort of Pepsi Generation will get air time on the Super Bowl: music downloaders.



Annie Leith, sued by the recording industry over music downloads, appears in a Pepsi ads.

mikebrig writes "Marx's legacy to humanity
Ibn Campusino

www.timesofmalta.com

A collection of papers presented at a seminar organised at the University in
1998 under the auspices of the Mediterranean Institute to mark the 150th
anniversary of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, was edited by Carmel
Vassallo and Clare Thake Vassallo.

hydrarchist writes:
Dark Matter, Las Agencias, and the Aesthetics
of Tactical Embarrassment (1)

Gregory G. Sholette

photo courtesy of Las Agencias
and Jordi Claremonte

In January and February
of 2003 the focus of mass media outlets around the world converged
upon a series of historically unprecedented street demonstrations
organized in opposition to the pending US war in Iraq. Estimates range
from six to ten million protesters left their homes and businesses
to occupy urban spaces in over sixty nations (2).
As unique as these events were however, one can find significant precedents
in an earlier cycle of mass demonstrations against global capitalism
organized by a wide range of activists from anarchists and eco-feminists
to militant labor unions and youthful Trotskyists as well as farmers,
house wives and "naked" people. As the artist Alan Sekula
described the memorable 1999 protestation against the World Trade
Organization

“There were moments
of civic solemnity, of urban anxiety, and of carnival. Again, something
very simple is missed by descriptions of this as a movement founded
in cyberspace: the human body asserts itself in the city streets against
the abstraction of global capital….”(3)

Karl Fogel writes:

The Promise of a Post-Copyright World

Karl Fogel

There is one group of people not shocked by the record industry's
recent decision to sue randomly chosen file sharers: historians of
copyright. They already know what everyone else is slowly finding
out: that copyright was never about paying artists for their work, and
that far from being designed to support creators, copyright was
designed by and for distributors — that is,
publishers, which today includes record companies. But now that the
Internet has given us a world without distribution costs, it no longer
makes any sense to restrict sharing in order to pay for centralized
distribution. Abandoning copyright is now not only possible, but
desirable. Both artists and audiences would benefit, financially and
aesthetically. In place of corporate gatekeepers determining what can
and can't be distributed, a much finer-grained filtering process would
allow works to spread based on their merit alone. We would see a
return to an older and richer cosmology of creativity, one in which
copying and borrowing openly from others' works is simply a normal
part of the creative process, a way of acknowledging one's sources and
of improving on what has come before. And the old canard that artists
need copyright to earn a living would be revealed as the pretense it
has always been.

AnonymousComrade writes:

Issue #3 of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest

As a magazine, we are a bully pulpit -- we are announcing, “Engage with
the complexities of possibility through reality. In this way, we will
become the better world.”

An anonymous coward writes:

The Libre Manifesto

A constellation of interests is now seeking to increase their ownership and control of creativity. They tell us that they require new laws and rights that allow them to control concepts and ideas and protect them from exploitation. They say that this will enrich our lives, create new products and safeguard the possibility of future prosperity. But this is an absolute disaster for creativity, whose health depends on an ongoing, free and open conversation between ideas from the past and the present.

— In response, we wish to defend the idea of a creative sphere of concepts and ideas that are free from ownership.(1)